


Worth The Weight

by SpoonerizeSwiftness (SplickedyHat)



Series: Heavy In Your Arms [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Explicit Language, M/M, Mentions of Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 05:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/SpoonerizeSwiftness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know you can only take care of your moirail for so long, protect him from so much, but that doesn't mean it doesn't scare you when you watch him stand under the eyes of the whole world.</p><p>In an exclusive interview with THE NIGHTLY HUNTER, the moirail of the red-blood commonly called THE SECOND SUFFERER discusses his quadrants, his scandalous past, and his relationship with his Imperial Humility!  EXCLUSIVE LEAKS!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth The Weight

**Author's Note:**

> Done for a fic request meme on Tumblr: A lovely anon requested a Heavy Heart GamKar with the line in it, "Of course I'm okay, I'm with you." How could I resist? U///U (Of course it turned otu about 100x longer than I expected it to, but I should have expected that, it's practically a trend by now. :D

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and if you could give one of your  _limbs_  to not be here, doing what you’re doing, you would. 

You knew it was coming, even in the triumphant, exhausted rush of your first ‘ _sermon’_ —that the problem wasn’t settled, that you were going to have to send your moirail back out to face the people whose only opinion on him is that he should stop existing as soon as possible.  It’s not politicians this time, but you almost wish it was; journalists are worse because they use questions like their specibi.  One slip-up and it crosses the galaxy. 

At least you get to be with him.  You suppose things could be worse.

Gamzee still doesn’t dress like someone who’s quadranted to the two most powerful and influential trolls in the empire, but you fussed over him long enough before you walked out in front of this hellishly observant crowd that you think he at least looks decent and presentable.  Black, white, grey.  Like anybody in the empire  _doesn’t_  know what his bloodcolor.  It sets you on edge a little, walking out here with him in grey and you with your blood color worked subtly into every possible place on your black clothes—a hundred sweeps ago, did anyone think there would be a day when a purple-blood hid his color and a mutant red-blood wore his on his chest?  You fucking doubt it.

The questions so far have been pretty simple—but you planned for that.  You and Nitram spent a whole day going over how things were likely to go once you and your moirail got out there, warning Gamzee about their tricks and traps, and you’re not sure whether you’re glad or not that you can feel him tapping his fingers on his knee under the table with a sort of frenzied, nervous energy even as he answers questions with impressive glibness.  He’s not taking it for granted this is as bad as it will get. 

On the other hand, a nervous Gamzee is qualified as  _very fucking bad._

 You make it through maybe five more minutes of innocent questions, and that’s when the first hit lands, from somewhere in the back, a woman’s voice, vicious and gleeful.

“ _Is it true you pailed your moirail?!_ ’

Gamzee’s other hand has been resting in yours since you both sat down; the second that question rings out it clenches on yours like a vice.  You can’t glance at him, can’t say a word, you can’t give the impression you’re prompting him what to answer he  _has_  to answer on his own—

“Yeah,” says Gamzee softly, and for a second his voice sounds tight, choked like he’s going to cry.

But then, as the voices of the crowd rise in scandalized chattering and exclamations, he sits up, half out of his seat,  _slams_  a fist against the table and raises his voice so it echoes— “ _—ain’t a thing I’m proud of!”_

Heads turn back to him, curious, mocking, gleeful, scandalized faces.  He was shaking before—now his hand is completely still in yours and your pulse is in your throat.

“…ain’t a thing I’d  _ever_  be motherfuckin’ proud of,” he repeats, and settles back onto the edge of his chair, very very straight-backed and tense as a drawn wire.  “I fucked myself over, as you all been so clear in tellin’ me, for all there’s more’n one face in here  _I know well by sight._ ”

There’s sudden, frozen quiet  People glance around, looking for the faces that turn away in shame—there aren’t any, but there are one or two that you think are… _too_  shocked.  You hate them on principle.

“I’m just  _askin’_  myself, why did you buy if you think I’m so very  _fucking bad_ ,” Gamzee muses—his voice keeps half-breaking into something that’s almost a yell, shaky, unsteady.  He sits there for a second, then shakes his head, shrugs it off.  “…ain’t a thing to worry about now I’m out of it, though.  I aim to  _forget._ ” His eyes flicker across the crowd.  You see that handful of people with their too-blank faces again.

He’s losing it.  You can hear his breath trembling in and out in sharp, angry hisses—you squeeze his hand, untangle your fingers with difficulty in the moment of silence and pap his knee gently.  He relaxes a little; when he opens his mouth again some of the shaking, icy nobility has gone out of his voice.

“…I got sent to help a brother who needed to not be lonely no more,” he says, and his hand takes yours again, squeezing so hard it hurts.  “Felt wrong even then, right?  You ever do somethin’ and you know the whole time, every part of you whisperin’ to you,  _motherfucker, you fucked it all up you gotta stop now_ but you do it anyhow because there’s  _no other motherfucking thing to be doin’?!_ ” 

You’re about to stand up and pull him away and  _damn_ the consequences—better he be seen being dragged off by his moirail than you having to jump up and shoosh him away from murdering a bunch of these foul bilious pieces of shit-born motherfuckers.  You’re actually tensing to stand.

And then, with an effort that you can almost feel in the air, he batters himself back under control.  When he opens his eyes again, he glances over to you before anyone else, and his eyes are sad and deep and tired.

“…think we both knew,” he says, and you have to bite your lower lip and take a deep breath to keep your face schooled into something even approaching ambivalent calm. 

“And are you  _still_ pailing your moirail?!” 

The moment shatters like glass.  He’s still looking at you; you see his face twitch, his eyes go wide and furious for a second.

You stroke his bony knuckles with one thumb and he bows his head and turns to face them.

“…I…would rather tear my own throat through and bleed out on the dirt, motherfucker,” he says, slow and cold and deliberate.  “I would rather fucking die than go back where I been.”  He drags a hand over his face and you think you’re the only one who catches the way his fingers trace down his neck and linger for a split second on the scars from his collar.  “…you get two more of your questions,” he says, and under the lazy familiarity of his voice there’s a sort of bone-deep weariness and tension that makes your teeth grit.  “ _Two_  more, and that’s all I’m accountable to.”

Hands rise, voices are suddenly babbling.  You hear snatches of questions,  _what’s the most—how much did—who has—how many—_

Gamzee raises a hand and points firmly into the crowd, and everyone turns to look, questions dying on their lips.

“You.”

It’s a greenblood, with a notepad instead of a fancy recording device and big, inquisitive green eyes.  She looks at both of you with a strange, sharp look, like she’s trying to puzzle you out.  “…do any of your quadrants mind?”  She asks, and it doesn’t sound like mockery.  She’s solemn, serious—almost worried, like she hopes they—you—don’t.

Gamzee actually smiles at that—he leans forward a little in his seat and she leans a little forward in the crowd, a tiny singularity of emphatic energy and rapt attention.  “Only got the two of them, for now,” he says plainly, “—don’t deserve a look from either fucking one, but they take good care of me, it’s motherfucking miraculous.  Don’t even ask who I got for flushed.”  He frowns—on his mild face, it’s sudden and forbidding.  “…I’m all hidden away but you’d track him down and tear into him, I know you would you motherfuckin’ parasites.”

The alternian media has been called far worse—nobody even bothers to look upset, just goes back to yelling out questions.  One voice rises above the others—“ _Is it true you’re flushed for the emperor?!_ ”

Gamzee’s eyebrows rise.  You school your face into the expression of disbelieving disgust that’s always inspired by the thought of your moirail and Nitram naked and  _shit_  now you’re thinking about it  _agh._

“Okay, first thing is that I literally just fucking told you I’m not gonna tell you who it is,” he says, and you suppose annoyed is…better than cursing, bloodthirsty fury?  Fuck, how much blind pity do you have to have to sit there and be protective of the  _emperor_?  Goddammit.  “…next thing is, I also just all got through tellin’ you I been made  _aware_  what the whole motherfuckin’ universe thinks of me.  You think I’m gonna toss out ‘emperor’ and ‘flushed for you’ in the same breath,  _ever_?”

( _he says I’m not even_ allowed _to call him the emperor,_ he said, like it was the most beautiful thing,  _keep callin’ him Tavros, says he don’t ever want to be the emperor around me—_ )

Well shit.

Where did your addled, empty-panned moirail learn to  _lie by omission_?  Sure he’s never going to say those two words in the same sentence, partially because Nitram would start telling him to call him by name again (you’re pretty sure he’s trying to stomp the word ‘emperor’ and anything else related out of Gamzee’s vocabulary entirely, actually) and partially because he doesn’t actually  _say_ he’s flushed very often, because it always kind of…chokes on the way out. 

He just told nothing but the truth and let them come up with the rest on their own.  Maybe there’s a working brain in there somewhere after all.

"If y'all are done," says Gamzee, and he stands up, still holding on to your hand.  You stand up too, defiantly squeezing his bony fingers tight.  "--because I'm  _real_  motherfuckin' done with your bullshit questions, for sure.  We'll be around.  Don't suffer in silence, brothers and sisters."

Dismissal, reaffirmation of your moiraillegiance, and on top of it all a   _sufferist_ blessing.  It’s like watching some poor sucker take two shots and a fatality on one of the old empress’s bloodmatches; the crowd gapes and your palemate stands, turns, strolls to the door and leaves them still searching for words.

You follow him out, and close the door on the shouted questions.  By the time you wave off the man waiting for you just outside of the door who wants to fix your hair and clothes and get turned around enough to find your moirail, he’s leaned back against the wall, sliding slowly down to crouch and rest his head on his knees.  You glance up and see people who had been converging on you both pull back and stand against the wall, heads bowed; Nitram just turned the corner at the end of the hallway, grinning like it’s early 12th Perigees Eve.  He slows down, smile falling, as he takes in Gamzee slumped against the wall and you down on one knee to reach for him. 

You shake him off silently and he nods and gives a dismissive wave of one hand in turn; the flunkies around the hall scurry off and he steps back towards the corner, pointedly not watching you.

“Hey,” you say, once they’re all gone, and Gamzee twitches, jittery.  His claws are digging into his arms, drawing blood—he flinches when you touch him, but you’re gentle and move slowly and he lets you pull them away and wipe the drops of oozing blood.  He still won’t raise his head from his knees though—his breathing is shaky and shallow.  “Hey,  _shoosh_.  Don’t freak out on me now.”

“ _Did I fuck up_?”  He’s not getting any less tense—you can see the muscles and tendons in his neck like wires, and you press a hand over them, trace it slowly up and down the side of his neck and to his cheek.  “ _That wasn’t a lie, right, I didn’t piss anyone off, I didn’t fuck up I didn’t mean to I was just so_ fucking angry—!”

“No, hey.  Hey!”  You don’t have time to be nice about this, not that nice usually works out for you anyway—his voice is rising towards a shout and you grab him by one horn and force him to turn his face up towards you, glaring right into his eyes.  “Gamzee.   _You did fine._ You did fucking  _great_.  Stop.   _Freaking.  OUT.”_

He holds your gaze for another few long, long seconds, then slowly, some of the tension seems to go out of him.

“…I…really?”  For a second he looks abjectly relieved, disbelieving—then a thought seems to occur to him and he squints at you suspiciously.  “…you wouldn’t lie to a brother about—”

“Oh, for god’s sake.”  You smack him on the back of the head.  He yelps and hunches forward, but at least he’s not glaring or shaking or yelling anymore.  “You should have seen Nitram’s face, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with that big of a shit-eating grin, okay?  You actually managed to tell the truth on all the questions but miraculously— _agh._ Fine.   _Miraculously_ , you came out the other side without making a single overtly incriminating comment.  You didn’t fuck anything up.  And I think some people might actually be rooting for you now.”

“I’m sure of it, actually,” says an all-too-familiar voice, and you glance up and see that Tavros has apparently judged this the time to come out from around his corner again, and he’s standing over you.  You loathe how impressive he looks when he stands over people.  It makes your teeth grind. 

…but on the other hand the sight of him seems to take the last of the horrible tension out of Gamzee’s shoulders.  He reaches up and grabs his matesprit’s hand; Nitram lets himself get pulled down, even though this floor and wall are pretty dusty and you know for a fact that there’s real gold involved in the embroidery for his outfit.  Hell, you three are all wearing some pretty nice shit, even Gamzee, but at this point it doesn’t really seem to matter at this point.

“I’ve got some…people…out there with the reporters,” says Nitram, and slumps against your moirail’s side, careful of his horns.  “They’re sending me in reports.  There are some people who are going to say some pretty nice things, actually!”  He frowns a little, and you never stop being obscurely annoyed by the way his expression when he suffers political setbacks on a galactic scale looks about the same as the expression most people use for ‘ _oh no, my lusus made a mess in my respite block’_.  “…some people are still going to be horrible about everything, I guess, but there’s not a lot to do about that, some people are just, well…uh…assholes.  Politically speaking.”

“That’s some political shit alright,” Gamzee agrees.  Now that the panic is draining out of him, he sounds like he might go to sleep right here on the palace floor—he nuzzles his face into your neck and takes a deep, calming breath and you squawk, and then try to pretend that ticklish is not a thing you are or have ever been.

“You’re both morons,” you assert.  And then, because he held on when you couldn’t help him, because he looks so tired, because you can still see the places his claws bit into his arms, “…seriously.  We’re okay.  It’s okay.  Are…uh…are you?" 

“Of course I’m okay,” he mumbles, and rakes his hair back from his face.  It’s getting longer—the longer it gets the wilder it gets, but somehow it suits him much, much better than the way it used to be.  He grins, leans back his head against the wall and pulls your head against his shoulder so your horns press into the hum of his voice in his throat, and would swear there’s nothing in the world you want more than this.  “…I’m here with you.”


End file.
